Jam

Jam digs up your old bounces, especially the ones you forgot about, and splits them into parts so you can mess around with them. Found something good? Hit Riff and it becomes a brand new Ableton set.

Opening Jam

Click Jam in the top bar. Click it again to go back to your library.

Jam plays projects that have a bounce. If you don’t have any yet, you’ll see Nothing to dig through yet. Export a bounce into a project folder and it’ll show up.

How songs get picked

Jam starts playing something right away. Songs you haven’t touched in a while come up more often than last week’s, but anything can come up. Songs you just heard sit out until the rest of your library gets a turn.

Up next at the top shows the next few picks. Hit Next (or →) to move on and the back button (or ←) to go back.

Splitting into parts

Jam splits each bounce into Drums, Bass, Vocals and Everything else. The splitting happens on your computer. Nothing gets uploaded.

MAKID splits the first few songs Jam will play in the background, so they’re ready the first time you open Jam. It waits while Ableton Live is open, so it never slows down a session. The splitter is a one-time download (about 300 MB).

If a song isn’t split yet, you’ll hear the full mix for a few seconds, then the parts kick in while Jam splits the rest of the song. You’ll see Splitting the rest of the song… until it’s done. If you skip ahead past what’s split, Jam plays the full mix until the parts catch up. Jam gets the next few songs ready while you listen.

If the splitter is still downloading when you open Jam, you’ll see Getting the splitter ready (one time)….

If a song won’t split, Jam tells you and plays the full mix instead. Pitch, speed and filter still work.

Playing with it

• Solo: click a part. Click more parts to solo them too
• Mute: Shift-click a part
• Pitch: up or down 12 semitones
• Speed: 0.5× to 1.5×
• Filter: turn left for darker, right for thinner
• Dice: rolls random solos, mutes, pitch, speed, filter and a loop. Sometimes it swaps in a part from another song too
• Reset: back to the original

Looping

Drag across the arrangement strip under the parts to loop that bit. If your set has locators, click a section to loop it. Press Esc or click Looping to stop looping. Pinch to zoom in on the strip.

Swapping in parts from other songs

Hit the swap button on a part to pull that part from another one of your songs. Jam looks for songs within about 12% of the tempo (half time and double time work too) and shifts it to the same key. Not feeling it? Hit it again for a different song, or Original to put the song’s own part back.

Swapping unlocks once the song is split. If nothing in your library is close enough in tempo, Jam tells you.

Riff

Hit Riff to turn what you’re hearing into a new Ableton set and open it in Live.

MAKID makes a new project folder right next to the original, like My Song Riff 1 Project, with My Song Riff 1.als inside. Your original project is never touched.

What comes with you:

• Your real tracks and samples from the original set, not the split audio
• Parts you muted or didn’t solo come in muted
• Pitch becomes transpose, and the tempo includes your speed change
• Your loop becomes the set’s loop
• Swapped parts bring in the tracks from the other song, lined up and transposed

What doesn’t: the filter.

MAKID tells you if anything needs a look, like samples that were already missing, unwarped audio that won’t follow the new tempo, or sends that got reset.

Riff needs Ableton Live and a project with an Ableton set. If the project only has a bounce, the button stays greyed out.

Shortcuts

• Space: play / pause
• → or N: next song
• ← or B: previous song
• 1 to 4: solo a part
• Shift + 1 to 4: mute a part
• D: dice
• R: reset
• Esc: stop looping

Jam plays don’t count toward your bounces’ play counts.